


Someone Else's Page

by HoneyCorvid



Series: Tell Me (Tell Me What You See) [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: AU-jon is a monster rather than an avatar (think like the distortion), Canon-Typical Body Horror, Canon-Typical Worms, Eventual Happy Ending, M/M, Nobody Dies, also the entities are slightly different in personality, everything is the same except jon is more evil and less of a dick, its fine, more tags to be added as i iron out the plot, the archives staff? communicating?? it MUST be an au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-03 07:00:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24346903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HoneyCorvid/pseuds/HoneyCorvid
Summary: Following Gertrude Robinson's sudden departure from the Magnus Institute, a new archivist is pulled seemingly out of nowhere to replace her. He doesn't reallyleavethe archives, per se, and he sure does occasionally blink all wrong, but it's probably nothing. It's probably fine!
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Series: Tell Me (Tell Me What You See) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1757773
Comments: 223
Kudos: 567





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i toyed with not posting this because i don't know how capable my executive dysfunction having ass is gonna be at finishing it but a bitch needs serotonin so here we go. 
> 
> anyway this is going to be largely light-hearted and everyone will be fine that is my solemn oath to you!! i can't take any more stress, CANON

The first time Martin meets Jon is also only the second time he’s ever been into the archives proper; the first time had been frantic and awful and panicked, rushed down to try and help an old man whose name he’d never learned laid out on a battered old couch, choking on the wrongness of his own lungs. 

It hadn’t worked. Martin tries not to think about it as he descends the ancient wood of the stairs. Each step creaks under his feet with the tone of a threat, a warning that any farther is a mistake, but he keeps going. What  _ else  _ is he supposed to do?

The archives themselves are dim and windowless with a fine layer of dust and silence that coats the stacks and catches the light in a way that feels  _ wrong,  _ shadows strange and grasping beneath the meager hanging bulbs. 

He walks slowly into the maze of shelves, away from the relative comfort of the desks and breathing room, calling out in a voice that’s traitorously small, “hello?”

“Back here,” calls a brusque man’s voice from deeper in the stacks. Martin’s heart does some impressive footwork as he carefully picks his way across the floor, avoiding the scattered boxes full of paper that someone seems to have dropped in all kinds of inconvenient places. 

And then he makes it to where the voice was calling from. 

At first, in the thick and clinging darkness of the archives, all he can make out is— _ eyes _ , wide and luminous, except Martin counts three, four, no, a  _ dozen  _ or more, far too close together to be part of anything but the same creature—

And then the figure straightens, shifting into the warm yellow light, whole and human in every way he can see. His eyes—of which there are  _ definitely only two _ —are a brown so dark and rich the irises are almost indistinguishable from his pupils. There’s a look in those eyes that’s strangely knowing, like he’s seen every foible of Martin’s life from afar already. Everything else about him seems normal enough at first glance; sure, he’s underweight, his posture atrocious, his hair disheveled in a way that makes a mockery of what was once a bun, but that’s fine. None of those exactly prove he’s some kind of—of  _ basement monster.  _

He’s definitely  _ gorgeous,  _ though. Bedraggled, but gorgeous. Martin wants to braid his hair. 

He blinks, slowly, those dark eyes boring into Martin’s core, staring like he’s waiting for something. 

“Er,” Martin starts, coming in strong, “uh—Mister Bouchard, he, uh, he asked me to bring you this—you  _ are  _ the new archivist, right?”

“Ah. Yes. It’s Jon,” Jon says, his posture improving slightly as he moves to take the file. He begins to flip through it absently as he talks, scowling at the pages as if they’ve wronged him. “Hm. Thank you, I suppose. Honestly, why Elias never bothers coming down here himself I’ll never know.”

The way he says it,  _ Elias,  _ drips with a vague distaste. Martin wonders why he agreed to take the job, if he hates his boss so much. Wherever he’d been before Gertrude’s sudden departure must have been unpleasant, if he accepted an offer from someone he seems to harbor nothing but disdain for. 

Jon frowns at the folder, a little crease appearing between his brows. He looks downright  _ mutinous  _ a moment later, his face somewhere between a grimace and a scowl. 

“Unbelievable,” he mutters, barely audible, and then suddenly he’s moving, brushing past Martin without a thought. When Martin just stands there, baffled, Jon glances his way and jerks his head towards the door. “—Come  _ on, _ mister Blackwood, outsiders can’t be in here on their own.”

“Oh! Oh, yeah, of course,” Martin says, half-jogging after him. It’s only when they’ve made it almost all the way up the stairs that Martin realizes he never actually told Jon his name. He doesn’t really get a moment to catch his breath and ask about it, though, because Jon strides up to the old oak door to Elias’ office and yanks it open with a violent  _ jerk.  _

“What can I help you with, Jon?” Elias doesn’t even glance up from his computer. Jon stalks across the room to his desk and smacks the folder down against it, displeasure painting his every movement. 

“What is this,” he hisses. 

“I believe it’s the requisite forms for transferring your new assistants to the archives,” Elias drawls, finally looking up as he leans back in his chair and folds his hands together primly. “It would probably be best, like I said, to choose people from the research department, since most of what they’ll be doing for you is-“

Jon tosses his head, making a cut-off, furious sound. “What they’d be  _ doing  _ is forcing me to take time away from my  _ work  _ to babysit a bunch of—ugh!”

He throws his hands into the air. Martin feels like he probably shouldn’t be here, but he’s frozen in the doorway. He watches Elias frown, icy grey eyes fixed on Jon’s face. 

“You  _ will _ need assistants, Jonathan,” he says, steely calm. “If you don’t feel up to actually reviewing possible candidates I am of course capable of choosing for you, but-“

“That’s not the point and you know it,” Jon hisses, cutting him off. “Working in the archives is—“ he stops. Glances back at Martin. Rolls his shoulders, sighing, sounding vaguely defeated. “ _ Fine.  _ Fine, I’ll pick some researchers.”

“At least three is probably best,” Elias says, turning his attention back to his computer. “Good day, Jon. Have those forms for me by tonight.”

Martin scrambles awkwardly to get out of Jon’s way as he whirls around and storms back out of the office. The door shuts behind them with a startlingly gentle  _ click _ and another grimace from Jon. He slumps, dragging his fingers through his hair in a way that makes it even more chaotic than it already had been. 

“Uh,” Martin says. He’s not sure what to say, really, but the silence makes his skin crawl. “I’m, um, I’m sorry?”

Jon separates his fingers enough to stare at Martin through them. “What on  _ Earth  _ for?”

“I, I mean, I feel like maybe I shouldn’t have stayed and watched that,” Martin babbles. His ears burn. “Are you—are you  _ okay?  _ You seem upset.”

Jon sighs heavily and begins walking back down the hall towards the Archives, gesturing to Martin to follow. “I’m fine, thank you. Elias just has a nasty habit of springing things on me without warning. I guess I have to find  _ assistants  _ now.”

He pulls open the door leading to the stairwell without explaining how he knows about Elias’ _ nasty habits _ considering it is his first day at the institute and raises an eyebrow at Martin. “You’re in research, right? Any insights?”

“Um.” In an instant, his near-encyclopedic knowledge of his coworkers and their lives leaves him. Jon’s stare is destabilizing. “I mean, uh…I know Sasha James used to help Ms. Robinson out sometimes? Er, unofficially, I think. She started when she still worked in artefact storage and just kind of kept swinging by the Archives occasionally when she transferred to research.”

Jon nods; he has that look of recognition and understanding in his eye again, the one that makes no  _ sense  _ considering how new he is. Martin soldiers on. 

“She’s probably, uh, probably your best choice, and she and Tim—Timothy Stoker, I mean—they work really well together. They’re kind of a team up in research. She’s got the, like, hacker skills, and he’s—“ Martin pauses to laugh, “—he’s a master of, um, of  _ seducing information out of people.” _

He puts on a hint of a silly voice at that, like he’s trying to gather up a team for some kind of heist. It’s absurd, but it gets a small laugh out of Jon, so that’s a win right there. 

“Thank you, Martin,” Jon says with a wry smile. “I’ll go through their CVs tonight—I believe miss James was actually mentioned in some of Gertrude’s notes, so that may well be an excellent start.” 

He sighs. “Is there anyone else you think works well with the two of them? I’m quite good at going through documentation, but I’m afraid my grasp of…  _ human relationships… _ is weak at best. It would be good if my team got along well with one another, at least, since I  _ doubt  _ I will be especially good at. Meshing. With them.”

Martin blinks several times. He said all of that in the exact same matter-of-fact tone he’s said everything that wasn’t lobbing insults at his boss; it’s hard to tell if it’s something he regrets or something he’s just decided to accept. Either way…

“Well, I mean, there’s me, I guess,” Martin says. “I’m not gonna pretend I’m as good a researcher as they are, but me and Tim get on quite well, and I’m a hard worker.”

Jon fixes his eyes on Martin, then, impossibly dark pools staring unblinking at and  _ through  _ him, and suddenly Martin is absolutely terrified that the instant this man so much as  _ glances  _ at his CV he will know exactly how full of it Martin is and fire him without a second thought. Just bringing himself up was a mistake, he’s certain, but he’s so easily suckered by a mysterious man with a pretty face. 

Finally, after several of the longest seconds of Martin’s life, in which he felt like a butterfly pinned to a block under the fascinated gaze of something huge and curious, Jon blinks. Nods. Offers Martin another wry smile. 

“If you’re sure you want the position you’re welcome to it,” he says. “Fair warning, working down here will probably wreck whatever outside schedule you have at least a bit, but I can have the paperwork for the three of you finalized by tomorrow. Bring the others by at the end of the day to talk with me, please; we can go from there.”

“I’m—uh- okay!” Martin says, flushing even darker. Jon’s lips twitch another degree towards a proper smile. He leans against the doorframe languidly, seemingly unbothered by the foreboding darkness of the stairs leading down into the Archives. 

“Excellent. Best you get back to Research, then, I’ve taken up quite enough of your day.”

He waves awkwardly at Jon as he walks away down the hall, and Jon raises one hand in acknowledgment before turning and heading down the steps, the door shutting behind him. 

Even still, even with the heavy wood of the door solidly closed between them, Martin can’t shake the feeling that the Archive itself is watching him go. He heads back up to the well-lit normality of Research, and the daunting but mundane task of telling Tim and Sasha he might have gotten them transferred to the  _ archives,  _ in a hurry. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crew gets settled in their new places; Jon has a lunch appointment.

Jon was right. He’s right a lot of the time, it turns out, but  _ specifically  _ he was right on the money when he said he was going to have trouble being a personable boss to them; it’s been almost two weeks since they transferred and Jon has barely spoken to them beyond their initial and awkward onboarding meeting, evidently more comfortable leaving sheafs of paper detailing their tasks on their desks sometime between when they leave in the evenings and come in in the morning. They actually  _ see  _ him only when he flits between his office and the stacks, usually moving quickly and with a singular purpose none of them could hope to divine. 

They never see him leave. Tim commented on it after the third day, that he’s always the first to arrive and the last to leave; presumably he leaves, anyway. When they went out for drinks the first weekend Tim and Sasha weaved an intricate fantasy over the weekend about him living in a secret maze beneath the institute, staying downstairs and shirking the sunlight because it would burn him or something; Martin had rolled his eyes and only pitched in when the worldbuilding felt inconsistent. 

Much of their actual work is taken up with reorganization; despite how confidently Jon retrieves files from the stacks, he complains constantly about Gertrude’s system and has tasked the three of them with what amounts to almost a complete overhaul of upwards of fifty years of files; it’s boring, mostly, except on those occasions they find something bafflingly old in with the new statements, or find a particularly  _ juicy  _ story in a box and waste half an hour regaling the others with the dirty details. 

Tim asks Jon one day if they’re meant to be actually  _ researching, _ and he just nods absently and says that when he finds a case that’s worth looking into he’ll send it their way.  _ For now, though, this place is a mess _ .

Finally, though, Jon calls them all into his office; it’s midway through the morning two weeks into their new assignments, and the three of them had been mindlessly sorting and stapling papers when Jon leaned out of his office and asked all of them to come chat. 

The office is… a mess. There’s paper on every visible surface, files and documents and handwritten pages of notes in a language that is  _ definitely  _ not English strewn across the desk and shelves and even scattered across the floor; Jon’s also apparently got a full  _ conspiracy board  _ set up, complete with red string and all, which he absently throws his coat over as they enter the room. 

“So,” he begins, ignoring the way Tim gapes at his crime scene of an office, “I have some work for you.”

With some effort, he heaves a box onto his desk. It’s full of neatly-labeled case folders, organized by date. There’s at least fifty of them in there, likely more, and Jon grimaces at them. 

“These are a portion of the files that are both likely legitimate and went unchecked up in research,” he says. “They all refuse to scan onto my computer, so I’ll be recording audio versions of the statements on a tape recorder, but there’s no need for you three to worry about that part. What I need from you is follow-up and verification regarding the pertinent details of each case. I trust you to split up tasks based on your personal strengths, although of course you’re welcome to ask my insight or advice on anything in here.”

Sasha stands up to peer into the box, flicking through the files with her fingers. “Do we need to tell you when we go to interview people or check stuff out?”

“No, not really. If you plan on doing something hazardous, let me know first, but generally I trust you lot to get what hard evidence exists. If you decide to commit a crime in the name of research, uh, just be discreet about it.”

Sasha laughs delightedly, and Martin grimaces. Tacit support from your boss for crime is a weird way to start the day. 

“Additionally, I’m aware I’ve been somewhat standoffish these last weeks,” Jon says, drumming long fingers against the old wood of his desk. “And I apologize for that. I’m sure you all understand the kind of frenzy I’ve been in trying to mitigate the damage done by Gertrude’s...let’s be generous and call it her system, but that’s hardly an excuse not to be present, as your boss.”

Nods all around. He glances at each of them, making eye contact with a spot somewhere above their eyebrows; it seems like he’s not fond of  _ actual  _ eye contact, as he hasn’t met Martin’s gaze even once since their initial meeting. Martin is honestly kind of glad, since he still sometimes feels the intensity of those eyes meeting his when he wakes up in a cold sweat from dreams he never remembers; he’s not sure what he’d do if he had to face that uncannily knowing stare every time they spoke. 

Sasha raises up one finger, asking, “so—do we do these in chronological order, or…?”

Jon just shrugs. “To be honest, I don’t care.  _ Reverse _ chronological would probably give you the most to work with, just based on people’s memories and remaining physical evidence, but starting at the beginning means you could catch last-minute stuff—most of the evidence for these is gonna be tenuous at best one way or another. Just do whatever seems doable; I’ll tell you if I need something specific myself.

“Now, is there anything else any of you need before we get back to work? I have an appointment in a few minutes and I should probably get this office looking slightly more presentable before they arrive.”

“Actually, yeah,” Tim says. “Why  _ does _ your office look like a hurricane that’s also a conspiracy theorist hit it? I mean, you’ve been getting on our cases about organization for two weeks.”

Jon blinks, then snorts. “I have a system, Timothy, and you don’t need to understand it to do your own job. I’ve been working on unraveling the contents of some of Gertrude’s… bafflingly constructed plans; there’s a certain level of chaos required in repairing the mess she made of my archive, I’m afraid. I promise, if I need your help with anything, I’ll translate my notes back into English. For now, everything you need’s in the box.”

Tim shrugs and grabs said box, lifting it with absolutely no sign of the effort it had taken Jon to get it onto the desk. After a beat of silence he and Sasha leave, leaving Martin hovering awkwardly in the doorway.

Jon, for his part, starts clearing his desk as soon as the box of files is gone, although any sign of a  _ system  _ is missing; mostly it looks like he’s just sweeping all the papers onto the part of the floor his desk hides, actually, but Martin doesn’t comment on it. Jon’s got his own thing happening in here and he doesn’t feel at  _ all  _ qualified to decipher it.

After a long, quiet moment, Jon glances up again and raises an eyebrow at Martin.

“Did you have a question, Martin?”

“Oh!” Fuck. “Um, that’s— yeah, actually. It’s not super important or anything, sorry, but I was just wondering if you— I mean, it’s just—” 

He’s vaguely aware that the file he’d been holding when he came into the office is a crumpled mess in his hands. Jon purses his lips.

“Spit it out, Martin,” he says mildly, and the words pull themselves out with a clarity that’s almost startling.

“I was just wondering if you wanted to be included when I make tea in the mornings, honestly,” he says. “I feel weird not making you any but I don’t know how you take it and I was too anxious about bothering you to ask—”

He slams his mouth shut, face flushing, as Jon bites back a laugh and finally meets his gaze. He didn’t remember wrong; it really is like being under a microscope, like all the eyes in the world have turned to stare at him all at once. Martin kind of wants the floor to swallow him.

“That would… be nice, actually,” Jon says, sounding slightly confused; there’s a wry little smile on his face that softens his stare somewhat. “I’m afraid, uh, I don’t actually…  _ know…  _ how I take it? I’ve never been much of a, er, a beverage connoisseur, I mostly just drink the cheapest and strongest instant coffee I can find. Bad habit I developed at university.”

Martin’s anxiety abandons him for a moment, chased away by disbelief, and he just gapes at him. “You don’t  _ know  _ how you like  _ tea?” _

“I honestly can’t remember the last time I had any.”

“Jon, that’s the saddest thing I’ve heard in my entire life, and think about what a high bar that is considering where we work.”

Jon looks away, laughing into his hand. The weight of his eyes leaves Martin, turning him back into just a single man, and there’s a part of Martin that realizes with a sinking sort of horror that he’s  _ adorable,  _ the way the skin crinkles at the corners of his eyes endearing and the dry, slightly surprised sound of his laugh extremely sweet.

Martin’s screwed. He shoots Jon finger guns— _ finger guns, Jesus Christ, Martin _ — and backs awkwardly out of the office, only just managing to catch his wave out of the corner of his eye before the door shuts between them.

He sags, slumping against the wall and groaning into his hands. When he looks up, Tim and Sasha are staring down at him, clearly working hard not to laugh.

“What.”

“Really, Martin?” Sasha asks, and she’s not even  _ trying  _ to look like she wasn’t eavesdropping. “ _ Finger guns?” _

“Shut up.”

Jon’s ‘appointment’ shows up about ten minutes later in the form of a distraught-looking man with dark circles under his eyes. It takes him three tries to get out his name and the fact that he’s  _ looking for the Archivist, that nice woman at the front desk said he’d be down here, am I in the right place,  _ and by that point Jon’s already emerged from his office with his hair plaited more neatly than Martin’s ever seen it before and a gentle smile on his face.

There’s something off about him, though. His smile is just a hair  _ too  _ warm, his voice just a bit too soft to feel quite right as he ushers the statement-giver towards his office; it’s almost like there’s a man Martin’s never met there, standing straight and neat and professional with a look in his eyes that he could swear was  _ hunger.  _ His nails look strangely sharp when he rests his hand on the man’s arm to steady him. 

Martin never thought he’d miss the constant feeling of being watched this place gives him, but it’s almost a relief when it slams back down on them half an hour later as the statement-giver shakily climbs the stairs back up to the outside world. He can’t imagine being the sole focus of the archivist’s stare for quite so long.

Still, though, it’s nice when Jon emerges from his office a few hours later with his hair down and a relaxed smile on his face. The circles under his eyes have receded somewhat, and he’s got a tape in his hand that he puts into its proper place with a satisfied, almost musical hum.

“Interview go well, boss?” Sasha asks, glancing at him. Her hands still on her keyboard, and he turns and flashes a grin at her.

“Yeah, I think so. I’ll need Tim to verify a few things for me, but that can be for tomorrow, I think. For now, I know it’s a bit early, but why don’t you three wrap up? I’m in a good enough mood that I could be convinced to pay for dinner and drinks, within reason.”

Martin puts his pen down. He can worry about that guy tomorrow; for now he gets to prove to his coworkers that their boss won’t dissolve upon touching sunlight, and that’s quite good enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no i didnt edit this. yes its probably almost incoherent. whatever. please comment im so goddamn lonely it's like peter lukas is constantly punching me in the solar plexus
> 
> also this is what i meant when i said jon is both nicer and more evil than he is in canon


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martin takes a sick day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for injury and worms in this chapter but they’re NOT AS BAD AS CANON so it’s FINE. also michaels here

“Okay, you’ve got to tell us how you and Elias know each other,” Tim says to Jon in between bites of curry. Jon grimaces.

“It was— well, it was a long time ago now. We go way back; we were even _friends_ once, sort of,” he says. He himself has barely touched his food, instead choosing to slowly nurse his ice water and watch the three of them with wide eyes. “The short version is he borrowed a book from me and _still hasn’t given it back.”_

“Is that why you’re working at the institute? To try and get your book back?” Sasha giggles. “Jon, and I say this with nothing but fondness, that’s the nerdiest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“That’s not— _all_ of why— I don’t need to explain myself to you,” Jon manages, edging on a laugh himself. “I needed the work and he needed a replacement Archivist. He never explained why he didn’t just hire from the people that were already on his payroll and I didn’t ask.” 

“What did you do before this, anyway,” Sasha asks mildly. “You turned up so fast after Gertrude left.”

Jon doesn’t meet her eye. “To be honest, mostly I was sleeping? Like I said, I needed the work.”

“Oh _no,_ Jon, were you just dead to the world dreaming about being a spooky librarian?”

“Shut up, Tim. I dream about things other than my job, you know.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Tim declares, and Jon just rolls his eyes fondly. 

The next few weeks are uneventful bordering on _pleasant;_ time goes by in a cycle of research and filing and repeated efforts to find Jon’s perfect tea, something Tim has dubbed the Tea Quest and Sasha has written a sort of little ditty for; so far he seems to like strong black tea with what is a morally reprehensible amount of honey in. Martin intends to keep fiddling to find the Perfect Formula, though. He wants to see what Jon looks like when he’s really, purely _happy,_ wants to see the non-frightening equivalent of the achingly satisfied smile he wears after taking statements; wants to be the one to cause it. 

Sue him. He’s gay. An affliction that only _worsens_ when one day Jon decides to forgo the messy bun or simple braid he usually wears and instead just lets his hair fall down his back in a gorgeous grey-streaked cascade. Never in his _life_ has Martin so badly wanted to touch something, and it is a mark of every ounce of self-control he has that he didn’t. 

It’s nice. _Work_ is nice. 

And then they start dealing with the Prentiss statements. There’s at least half a dozen of them in all, all disgusting and strange and at least one —Prentiss’ own— stained with something unidentifiable and dark that covers words in a way only Jon’s able to squint past. Martin spends ten minutes washing his hands after touching that statement, and it’s still not enough to get rid of the awful crawling feelings he gets every time he stops paying attention to every part of his body. 

The follow-up on Carlos Vittery’s apartment was supposed to be simple. Quick in and out, maybe ask the neighbors if they remember him, check for cobwebs of unusual size, done. But he forgot his torch and now it’s all gone to shit. 

Jane Prentiss stares up at him with the eyes of the awful things that live in the hollows where her own once sat, her laugh an awful squelching sound, and Martin is not especially ashamed of screaming.

—

“Have either of you seen Martin?”

Tim glances up at Jon, who’s hovering awkwardly between his and Sasha’s desks with his eyes fixed on his phone. “No, why?”

“He’s just sent me a text message-“ he says it like that, two carefully enunciated words, _text message,_ and again Tim wonders if he’s thirty or a hundred, “-about being ill, but he didn’t pick up when I called him to verify. I’ve got a weird feeling and I was hoping he’d been more clear with one of you.”

“No, sorry,” Sasha says, turning to frown at him. “Poor guy, I hope he’s okay.”

Jon hums in something like displeasure, then sighs. “Well, thank you both anyway. I just worry—“

He cuts himself off at a small buzz from his phone and suddenly his eyes go flat and blank, the wide darkness of them threatening to swallow up any sign of personhood in his expression. 

He snaps back into awareness a moment later with a furious look on his face and shoves his phone into his pocket. 

“Change of plans, I’ll be back in a few minutes,” he says, dipping into his office to grab an overcoat Tim’s never seen him actually wear before. When they go out for dinner he generally brushes off the cold and just wears his usual jacket. 

“What—“

“Got a message from an old acquaintance,” Jon says hurriedly. “Don’t worry about it overmuch, I just need to go pick something up. Don’t really trust her not to break it.”

And then he’s gone, faster than Tim or Sasha can manage to ask any follow-up questions; he sweeps up the steps out of the Archive almost silently, the creaky wood not seeming to notice or care about his weight. 

—

Martin is going to lose it. He’s bunched the one pillow that’s not being sacrificed to the Great Door Crack Rebellion around his head in an effort to drown out that fucking _knocking,_ and he’s curled on the bathroom floor because it’s clear and a bright enough blue to see worms against, and he’s got a corkscrew and a knife next to him that he’s shaking too hard to use—

And then the knocking cuts off abruptly, swallowed up by a sound like if static could scream, and all of a sudden Martin knows that Jane Prentiss’ attention has finally left him. He stumbles to the front door, wide-eyed and desperate, the static threatening to drown his mind. 

Through the door, through the static, he hears a voice that’s almost familiar. It starts to speak, then cuts off with a sound of pain and a rushing wave of white noise that threatens to drown out the world for the instant he hears it; it dies down again a moment later, dissolving back into the mistuned-radio crackle of whatever has arrived outside his door. 

“ **We both know that won’t work, Jane,** ” the static says, and Martin covers his ears but it does nothing; even if he were to somehow deafen himself he’d still know what is being said. Somewhere beneath the screaming static there is an awful wet sound like a hundred eggs breaking all at once, and then a _wail_ that sounds both like the awful screeching of the crawling, skittering things that Martin knows will haunt his nightmares for the rest of his life but also and somehow more sickeningly it sounds like something that was human once, torn and pitted lungs gasping in just enough breath to cry out. 

After that, there is finally quiet. The static fades slowly, leaving behind a hollow, empty silence broken by Martin’s gasping breaths and a slow, steady dripping on the other side of the door. When he looks down he realizes that something inky black is seeping through the fabric of the towel he’d stuffed under it, the blue terrycloth staining a shade so dark it won’t let his eyes focus on it. 

And then there’s a knock. For a single awful second Martin thinks Jane won whatever contest just transpired, but this knock is gentle, tentative; the sound of a single bony knuckle rapping calmly against wood. 

“Martin?” says the voice on the other side, and Martin realizes all at once both that it is someone he knows and that the being inches away from him was never human at all, that somehow that perfectly normal voice is _less_ human than Jane’s awful scream. “Martin, it’s Jon. Could you open the door?”

He absolutely should not open the door. There’s at least one monster beyond it.

He opens the door. Jon is sagged against the frame, something thin and deepest black seeping from a smattering of holes across his face and neck, as well as his left arm. The ink—or at least it looks like ink—is slowly staining his jumper, and the collar of his shirt seems to be a completely lost cause already. 

“Holy shit,” Martin says, forgetting all his questions. “Are you okay?”

Jon grimaces. “I’ll be fine once we get back to the Institute, thank you. Sorry about your towels—you wouldn’t happen to have any bandages to hand, would you?”

Martin thinks. “Uh, I might have one or two? Not really anything that could handle all…that, though, sorry.”

Jon laughs faintly, glancing up at Martin with a pained smile, and on the upswing of his blink more eyes open than he should, by all rights, be able to use. There’s at least three more on his face than usual, one sly and curved beneath each normal one and one wide and dark in the center of his forehead. Martin compartmentalizes whatever he’s feeling about _that_ right quick and picks up the towel off the ground, using it to dab at Jon’s neck where the bleeding seems to be worst. Fussing he can do. Fussing will keep him from having a breakdown about how many fucking _eyes_ his boss-crush-whatever has and about how that’s not actually making the _crush_ part of that any less powerful. 

“What…happened, out there?” Martin asks, peering beyond Jon’s small form and out into the hall. There’s a splattering of ink on the walls and floor, as well as a decent number of stained-dark worm corpses pooled on the ground around where Jon had been standing. Jon shrugs. 

“Miss Prentiss wasn’t thrilled that I interrupted her fun,” he says. “But I’m not exactly palatable to her, so after causing me a bit more pain than I would have preferred, she left. Hopefully she won’t come back, but it would probably be wise for you to stay at the institute or a friend’s place for a few days anyway.”

“Uh…right,” Martin says, gently ushering Jon deeper into his flat. Jon sways dangerously as he moves. “Look, Jon, are you sure I shouldn’t call a- a doctor or something? You don’t look too good.”

“I will be _fine,”_ Jon says again. “Should just get home quickly. Actually— sorry in advance about this, Martin.”

And then he raps twice on the wall, or at least what _was_ the wall, because at some point while Martin was _actively looking at it_ it suddenly became not a wall anymore but a slightly worn yellow door. 

The door swings open with an ominous creak, and something tall and wrong peers out, frowning at Jon. 

“You look a _fright,_ Archive,” it says. Its voice sounds like a bad trip. “What did you _do_ to anger the flesh-hive so much?”

“ _She_ was feeding off one of _my_ assistants,” Jon says, sounding vaguely annoyed. It’s not quite a _level_ of bad that would be appropriate for whatever the hell is happening here. “And don’t call me that. I don’t have the energy for the name argument again, Michael, I just need a door back to the Archives.”

The thing— _“Michael”_ —shrugs. The movement is somehow more in its hands than its shoulders. “Sure. I’d hang on to your little assistant if I were you, though, wouldn’t want him getting lost.”

Somehow that bothers Martin more than anything else so far in this bizarre conversation. 

“I’m _right_ here,” he says, and Jon… actually laughs, warm and fond and human. 

“Yes, Michael, he’s right here. Now can we please come through?”

Michael steps aside, holding the door open for them; beyond is a long, straight hallway, carpeted and lined with mirrors and definitely not a part of Martin’s building. 

Jon takes Martin’s hand in his own, offering him a look somewhere between a smile and an apology. “Best you do hang on though, Martin,” he says. “The corridors are tricky.”

He just nods, letting Jon lead him forward with their fingers tangled together. Jon’s hand is warm and thin, and luckily he chose to hold Martin with the one that’s not covered in ink-blood. When the door seals behind them, Martin is too preoccupied to notice. 

“Oh, Jon, you have a—“ Michael pokes Jon in the chin with one long, undulating finger, and Jon hisses. “-Ew. You have a worm corpse in your neck, let me get it.”

“It would flush out eventually, I wish you wouldn’t just _stab_ me without warning,” Jon grumbles. Michael retracts its finger, which now does indeed have a small, dark-stained shape pierced through upon it. 

“You’re _welcome_ for saving you the trouble of having something _rot_ in your _neck,_ Archivist,” it says. Jon rolls all of his eyes. 

“Yes, thank you, _Distortion,”_ he drawls. “We can have an argument about if that was necessary later. For now—“

He taps a mirror with one inky knuckle, and suddenly they’re standing on the threshold of a door into the Archives. Jon’s hand is still warm in his, but when he looks, the extra eyes are gone. 

The ink is still there, though, and the doorway they’re in is definitely part of an IKEA shelf, and Tim and Sasha are staring. Jon drops his hand. 

“Hey, yeah, what the fuck,” Tim says, and Michael cackles and slams the door behind them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeet


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The assistants get some answers.

Jon sits slumped on the dusty cot he’d pulled out of, inexplicably, old document storage, rubbing his temples with long fingers that are still stained dark with the ink that had been pouring out of him where blood should be only a few minutes earlier. The wounds are healed now, just smooth pink circles of scar tissue against ink-blotched brown skin. The scars themselves are noticeably  _ not  _ stained, having evidently formed after the bleeding stopped, but Jon spent a few minutes in the bathroom worrying over them anyway. He scowled at the mirror like he was angry with his flesh for leaving behind any marks at all. 

Everyone else is sitting around as well; Martin is beside him on the cot, although he’s noticeably less far back than Jon; Jon has leaned up against the wall the cot is shoved against with his legs tucked up beneath him, where Martin’s perched on the edge of the mattress like he’s ready to bolt at a moment’s notice. 

He is, actually. Ready to bolt, that is; he keeps feeling crawling squirming things on his skin when he stops looking, and when he looks at his hands everything seems to shape itself into spiraling hallways and hallucinogenic laughter, and no matter  _ what  _ he does there’s that ever-present staring feeling that the archives is drowned in, like there’s a horde of unnamed monsters peering out at him from the heavy shadows between the stacks. He drags a hand through his hair, exhausted, and immediately regrets it and spends several moments checking his hair for worms. 

Sasha’s claimed the one folding chair they had that didn’t have a box on it, and Tim decided to just flop down on the floor and stare at them from there. He leans lightly against Sasha’s knee, looking simultaneously casual and on the verge of absolutely losing it. Martin’s story freaked him out, and Michael’s door freaked him out, and Jon apparently bleeding ink out of wounds that take five minutes to heal is  _ not  _ helping. 

“So. Magic,” he says. Jon grimaces. 

“Yes.”

“Jon, and I say this affectionately, what the  _ fuck?” _

“Yes.”

Sasha snorts before piping up herself. “So you knew about all this junk beforehand? Is that why we’ve been going so hard on the worm stuff?”

Jon hums another agreement. Sasha frowns; it’s gentle, but it’s there. 

“And…you’re not human yourself, are you? You’re way too comfortable with all this, and we  _ know  _ people don’t just walk away from a Prentiss attack.”

Another grimace. This time it’s closer to a wince.

“I apologize for not telling you before,” he says, ”I confess, it was…unkind, of me, to hire the three of you without first explaining what it was you were getting into, but at the time it would have been…  _ difficult  _ for me to explain it to you. But since you now Know enough to ask,” he puts a strange emphasis on  _ Know,  _ like it’s something more important than simply the possession of information, like it’s something huge and sacred; “—There is a bit of information I can share with you. 

“To begin with, Sasha, you’re correct about several things already; I’m not human, yes, but more than that you’re completely right that you  _ should  _ be the one holding my current position—yes, I heard that, and I’m not angry so please don’t worry—Gertrude had certainly hoped you would be, but unfortunately most of Gertrude’s final plans have been…shall we say  _ cancelled,  _ and I admit I’m… somewhat easier to control than another human archivist would have been.”

“So she  _ was  _ human?” Sasha asks, “Gertrude, I mean. She wasn’t… like you, or Prentiss?”

“Interesting question,” Jon says. There’s a strange combination of regret and delight in his eyes, like he’s happy to answer even though he wishes he didn’t have to. “Like me, not at all, although we had more similarities than I imagine she would have liked. Like Jane Prentiss? Not  _ entirely.  _ She was more like her than she was like me, anyway, although she spent decades pushing as hard as she could against becoming….well, against  _ Becoming.  _ Jane, and to an extent Gertrude as well, made a series of choices that led to their, ah, shall we say _ departure from humanity  _ as it is traditionally known. What they became, I generally call Avatars—although of course there’s nothing, um, nothing  _ official _ about that title or anything, it’s just useful to have a label in my experience—but, er, yes. Avatars. Usually once-human servants and representatives of the fourteen Dread Powers that rule over the wretched and uncaring underbelly of your world. They’re stronger and harder to kill than  _ people,  _ and require a….. hm. An  _ unorthodox diet _ , which varies from individual to individual.”

Tim cuts in. “And that’s what you are too?”

The expression on Jon’s face turns twisted and noncommittal quite rapidly and takes a long moment to smooth back out. He sighs. 

“I guess most people in our business  _ would _ call me an avatar as well, so yes in  _ that _ sense, but…” he sighs, drumming his fingers on the mattress. “—the primary difference is that I was  _ never  _ a person. I came into being like this, and I imagine I will die like this as well. In terms of what we see in statements, I have more in common, functionally, with the, er, the monsters. Than I do the spooky people.”

“...Huh.”

“It boils down to choice, at the end of the day,” Jon says, plucking anxiously at the cuffs of his sweater where the fabric has begun to fray. “I didn’t ever make an active choice to become this; avatars did. Often—usually, even—the choice didn’t  _ feel  _ like a choice, or it was an  _ awful  _ choice between several  _ terrible  _ options, but choices they were nonetheless. Me, I’m just… kind of a cast-off fragment of the Ceaseless Watcher, tasked with finding fear and stories to give to it.”

He shrugs. Martin really hadn’t ever given much thought to how  _ small  _ Jon is, but it’s deeply obvious now, in the quiet dark of old document storage, half curled up on the cot he got out for Martin to stay on. He’s  _ tiny; _ Martin could probably carry him in one arm without much difficulty. 

“Unfortunately, with the level of free will I have comes  _ guilt,”  _ Jon mutters, tugging at his sleeves. “I don't like what I am much more than you do. I remember I didn’t  _ used  _ to care, but I guess centuries of experiencing secondhand what it feels like to be human leave an  _ impact.” _

“You said you had an  _ unorthodox diet,”  _ Sasha says. “What’s that mean?”

He scowls, as though the presence and vocality of a human conscience is an inconvenience like a busted tire or a closed restaurant; something real and extant but still at the end of the day only an inconvenience. 

“In my case? Statements. The eye, our patron, wants to appropriate and exacerbate the trauma the other entities leave behind; I am one of the vessels through which it does that.” He sighs and tucks a strand of hair behind his ear. 

“I generally work around the guilt,” he says, his voice a drawl, “by targeting real dicks. I mean, just genuinely awful people. They’re not quite as  _ satisfying  _ as innocents, because the dread powers are—to put it mildly— pretty awful themselves, but it’s plenty. Better than the… the  _ expired soylent  _ of just reading old statements from the stacks.”

“Sorry, wait, gonna get to you calling old pages of trauma expired soylent in a second but circling back to a minute ago when you said  _ our  _ patron, was that—was that the  _ royal _ we, or-“

“No, Tim,” Jon says, and now he looks miserable again. “I meant  _ ours.  _ Mine, yours, Sasha’s and Martin’s and Elias’ and everyone in the institute, to an extent. It is strongest in the Archives, but the Eye’s influence has seeped into every crack in the brick of this building and every sense and sound and eye staring down at us and out at the world. The Eye, the Beholding, the Ceaseless Watcher—it has many names, but it is all the one being. It  _ is  _ the institute.”

He stops, his guilty frown battling with an almost fervent reverence that sparkles in the darkness of his eyes, then sighs and says, “—And it is  _ me,  _ as well. Or at least I am part of it, as is the Institute; I don’t mean to imply that we are the  _ extent  _ of the Beholding’s domain.”

“And we’re a part of that now?” It’s the first thing Martin’s said in a while, and Jon glances over at him with a sad smile. 

“...Yes. It extends you all a certain level of protection and power, though not as much as a proper Archivist would have, in return for your work in the service of rooting out and recording knowledge.”

“So the… this eye thing, it’s into knowledge? Learning?” Sasha leans forward in her chair, rapt, steepling her fingers against her chin. 

“Sort of. The Dread Powers are…they’re manifestations of  _ fear;  _ the eye is the fear of being seen, being known and watched and categorized. It is also the fear of digging too deep, of pushing and pushing until you find the rotten core that beats at the heart of the worst secrets. Knowledge itself is only part of it.”

“Is that why I always feel like someone is staring at me when I’m here?” 

Another guilty look flashes across Jon’s face. “Ah. Well, I don’t generally  _ lie,  _ as a matter of principle, and it would technically be true to just say yes here, but I’m afraid that feeling is… me, at least while you’re down here. Sorry.”

“So, what, you spend all day creeping on us for your spooky god?” Tim asks. “Jon, that’s—“

“No! I mean, yes, but— _ no!  _ I- the archives are— _ augh,”  _ he manages, dragging his hands down his face. His hair has fallen out of its braid and cascades messily over his shoulders, and again, irrationally, Martin wants to touch it. 

“The Archives are my domain,” Jon says slowly, once he’s recovered. “My home, my temple, my pr— my  _ home.  _ An extension and manifestation of my nature. I keep watch here, now that it is back under my control.”

Martin pipes up again. “Back?”

“Yeah,” Jon says. “Gertrude was a sort of experiment. I don’t know exactly what James Wright wanted to figure out with her, but before that, I had been in charge of these stacks for a hundred and fifty years. I was… quite bored. For a significant part of her tenure.”

“How fuckin’  _ old  _ are you?” Tim bursts out, half sitting up. Jon just shrugs. 

“Pretty old. Monsters age differently than humans do. For us, or at least me, my body is more...conceptual than it is functional, hence the, uh, the ink—so there’s no real reason to age or die, if I’m eating regularly enough.”

“...Wild.”

“Yes,” Jon says with a wry smile. “Avatars of the other fears all work differently, although most are extremely long-lived if they don't kill each other and the vast majority gain some kind of regenerative or injury-negating traits, which are especially potent f they have a place of power and a source of fear to feed on.”

“Wait,” Sasha says, and Jon turns to her with one eyebrow raised. She’s frowning at the air, absently biting her knuckle like she’s thinking hard about something.

“What is it?”

“If you’ve been with the institute for two hundred years, why did you tell us you and  _ Elias  _ go way back? Was that just a lie, or?”

Jon looks skewered, sitting silent for a moment before he slowly shakes his head. “I don’t lie. I mean, I  _ can,  _ but it… hurts me. I am made of awful truths, which I can twist to a certain degree, but not far enough to  _ lie.  _ I  _ have  _ known him for a long time. He  _ does _ —”

He chokes, gasping silently as his voice cuts off sharply. He raises his arms to his mouth, dragging in a long breath that comes back out as a hacking cough, and then grimaces. Martin shifts to touch his back without thinking, worry overtaking his anxiety.

“...There’s not a lot I can tell you about the various heads of the Magnus Institute,” he says, after a long moment. He sways slightly towards Martin’s hands, his eyelids drooping a bit, and sighs. “I am tied to this place, and, well—there are certain things I can’t say.”

He brushes a cobweb out of his hair with a shaky hand and scowls at it like it’s wronged him terribly. As he flicks the strands off his fingers and towards the floor, he sighs heavily. “That being said I will do my best to provide you answers where I have them from here on out. Again, I am...sorry for not telling you before.”

“From here on out? There might not  _ be  _ a here on out, what’s stopping me from just  _ quitting-”  _ Tim starts, then stops suddenly, looking vaguely sick. “Oh god, can we not quit?”

Jon flinches. He opens and shuts his mouth, avoiding any of their gazes. When he finally does speak, his voice is soft and hoarse. 

“...I’m sorry,” he says again, his voice barely above a whisper, and the way his hands knot in his sweater makes Martin think of  _ with free will comes guilt,  _ throws him back to the frustration and anger on his face when Elias told him he had to select assistants. “I’m sorry. I tried to convince Elias to let me work alone, but he insisted, and I—I can’t-“

He aches. He doesn’t know what hold Elias has over Jon, but it’s clear this is not what Jon  _ wanted;  _ he looks small and miserable and not quite human but not anything  _ but  _ human either, and Martin breaks, tugging him in by his shoulder to give him a hug. 

Jon goes at first very stiff and startled before he absolutely melts into Martin’s arms, winding his own skinny ones around his back and clinging tightly as he shivers into his shoulder. His hair tickles Martin’s hand, and it’s somehow even softer than it seemed, which he throws into the Not Now Box alongside the extra eyes and the weird monster protectiveness and every other thing that he Cannot Deal With Right Now. He’s beginning to think he might need a whole new Not Now Box in his brain  _ just  _ for Jon stuff. 

“I’m sorry,” he says again, muffled into Martin’s shoulder. Martin glances at Tim and Sasha, both of whom look…conflicted. 

“So, what, you...can’t say no to Elias or something?” Tim asks. Jon pushes himself up into more of a steady position and nods, trembling hands still locked in Martin’s shirt. 

“Correct,” he says. His other eyes flicker open, on his face and throat and wrists, all dark and miserable. Tim raises his eyebrows. 

“Oh, jesus, you weren’t kidding about the not human thing, huh?”

“What, the eyes? Listen, I’m tired,” Jon says dryly, his voice only shaking a little. “Trust me, I can get weirder. But to your question—no, I can’t deny Elias if he gives me direct instructions. Even if I could he would have assigned people to me; it’s a shame you’re all so genuinely lovely, considering the unfortunate turnover rate in archival assistants in Gertrude’s time.”

“She had  _ assistants?”  _ This time it’s Sasha that’s surprised, leaning forward with a frown. “I only ever saw her working alone or with that...weird goth, the one who always left as soon as I came downstairs.”

“Gerry—er, Gerard Keay. Yes,” Jon says. “He was not a formal assistant; her final assistant passed away in a fire some years ago, and only one is still alive in any capacity, although how much of his existence is the man he was and how much is the monster he merged with is uncertain at best. I will be trying harder than she did to keep you lot alive, but I admit this is a more dangerous job than a traditional library posting.”

“Gerard Keay like from the  _ statements?” _

Jon hums assent. “Yes. He and Gertrude had a sort of kinship; they were on a trip together when he died. Brain tumor, awful thing. Amazingly not supernatural.”

His hand has fallen to just rest on Martin’s knee, since he seems to have calmed down slightly. It’s still shaking, and his eyes still dart nervously between the three of them, but he’s calmed. 

His hand is warm. The fact that it’s warm is eclipsing the whole “you-might-die” thing. 

“So wait, we can’t be fired either?” he asks, suddenly thinking about his CV. 

“Hm? Oh, no, or at least  _ I  _ can’t fire you. I imagine Elias can’t either, since he’s not the one actively doing the magic that binds us to this place. So you have job security, at least,” Jon says, shooting him a nervous smile. “—I’ve known you lied on your CV the entire time, by the way. You’re an excellent assistant, considering your lack of formal training.”

Ah.

“...Ah,” he says. “Well. That’s. Good, I guess?”

Tim snorts, and then suddenly all three of them are giggling, blown away by the absolute absurdity of their situation. Jon just stares, looking baffled. 

“Are you all...okay? Why are you laughing, I don’t understand,” he says. Tim pats him on the shoulder. 

“Don’t worry about it, boss. Oh, hey, I have some questions about spooky shit unrelated to the Institute that I gotta ask you,” he says, and Jon nods. 

“Yes, of course. I’ll answer to the best of my abilities and, er, administrator permissions? Can’t promise I won’t choke up again, although if it’s about what I expect it is that won’t be much of a problem. We can do that now, if you like—Martin, you’ve had a rough day, would you like to have some time to rest?”

“Oh, sure,” Martin says. He  _ is  _ exhausted, absolutely, and the cot is surprisingly soft, but he still mourns Jon’s hand on his leg the moment Jon moves to stand. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [martin voice] honestly i’m kind of relieved i can’t quit or be fired i lied on my resume and my boss is hot


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martin and Jon have a conversation over breakfast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heyoh this chapter was supposed to have more to it but i wanted to get SOMETHING out so enjoy

The wild thing about moving into the archives is he kind of assumed that he’d  _ see Jon leave _ if he lived there. 

This was incorrect. Where and when Jon leaves remains an absolute mystery even once Martin fully spends his nights in the Archives, but he  _ does  _ leave. Martin knows this, because when he wakes up disoriented and frightened in the middle of his first night in document storage, Jon is nowhere to be found. The stacks are dark and silent, and somehow the only thing more unsettling than the constant watched feeling he gets when Jon’s here is the  _ lack  _ of it now that he’s not. No signs point to him having actually left— his coat is still thrown haphazardly over a chair, his laptop still plugged in on his desk; there’s even still an empty mug from the cup of tea Martin had insisted on making him at nine P.M. when it became clear he wasn’t planning on stopping his work just because Martin was present and going to sleep early. 

It looks for all the world like he’s just stepped out but his  _ presence  _ is gone, the lifted weight of it making the archives feel strange and liminal, dreamlike in their mundanity. 

Martin goes back to bed. When he wakes up again at five-thirty Jon is already back, curled up in the battered old armchair in the breakroom with a blanket and a notebook on his knees. He glances up when Martin walks in, giving him a soft smile that crinkles the edges of all five of his eyes, and it is frankly miraculous that Martin manages not to slam into the doorframe. 

“Good morning,” Jon says. It’s still dim in here, windowless as it is; he seems to have only turned on the small table lamp next to the chair in some kind of concession to the hour, or maybe as a courtesy to Martin. By the luminous reflection in his eyes, it seems like he doesn’t need it. 

“Uh, morning,” Martin says hesitantly. Last night was the first time they’d been alone in the archives together since they met, and it’s still very weird. For Martin, at least. He can’t speak to how comfortable Jon is having him here. In the absence of anything better to say, he reverts by nature to fussing. “Have you eaten?”

Jon blinks owlishly up at him. “...Not as a general rule, no. It always seems like an awful lot of work for very little reward.”

“Oh, right,” Martin says, laughing uncomfortably. “I’ll just… fix up something for me, then. I suppose. D’you want tea? Coffee? I can make you breakfast if you like but no pressure or anything-“

“Martin, it’s fine,” Jon says softly, sounding surprised at the soft laughter that comes out with his voice. “I appreciate it. I’d take tea, thank you.”

Martin nods, walking to the kitchenette and starting the kettle on autopilot; he hadn’t gotten round to picking up groceries the night before, so he’s kind of just throwing stuff together—a banana, yogurt, some goldfish crackers that he’ll pay tim back for—but there’s the stuff for tea. Tea is easy, tea is rhythmic, tea is still not down pat because he has still not found Jon’s warm leaf water soulmate but he is  _ getting there  _ and the frustration is worth it for the way he smiles up at Martin when the mug is handed to him. 

“Thank you, this is lovely,” he says. “Martin—I don’t want to pry, but if you wouldn’t mind telling me how you’re holding up with everything I would appreciate it. I know the last few days have been… a lot. For you.”

It’s interesting, the way he crafts his sentences to avoid direct questions; when he notices it Martin can’t help realizing he’s  _ always  _ done that, avoiding asking directly unless he must. It’s considerate of him. 

“I’m… I’m okay,” Martin says, settling into a chair with a sigh. “I mean, I’m not  _ great.  _ Tired, still jumpy. Still kinda trying to resculpt my worldview, you know? But I think I’m okay.”

Jon nods slowly, his eyes focused unwaveringly on Martin’s. It’s weird, to be the sole recipient of his gaze. There’s a pressure to it, a weight, that feels like it really, really  _ should  _ be scary. 

But it’s not. It’s just Jon. 

It’s the same Jon that Martin saw stop dead in the middle of a crowded sidewalk to coo at a cat in a windowsill, the same Jon that absently fiddles with his hair so much every day that what starts as a neat plait  _ always  _ ends up a mess around his shoulders. His stare is no different than the way he researches, single-minded and focused but not forceful or cruel. 

Maybe he is a monster; almost  _ definitely _ he’s a monster, and probably those eyes are some kind of cursed. But Martin is lonely, and all it feels like to him is contact with someone that cares, and he sinks into that feeling eagerly and without fear. 

“D’you want me to make a proper statement about the Prentiss thing?” he asks, meeting some of Jon’s eyes without flinching. “I don't have to mention how you saved me or anything, but it’s probably a good idea to let the researchers looking into her case know that she can, uh, commit siege warfare.”

Jon looks pained for a moment, turning his focus to his tea. 

“I agree it would be a good idea, but I worry about… feeding on you,” he says. “Even if you wrote it down instead of recording it, it would become part of me. I’d feel all of it.”

Martin jolts and stares at him, horrified. “You— you  _ feel  _ all the statements? All that pain, all the fear, oh my  _ god,  _ you-“

Jon waves his hands with an almost frantic look on his face. “No, no, it’s fine, I—the way it feels is- it’s very hard to explain. Yes, I feel all the fear and the pain and the anger and the loneliness; I know exactly how it feels to be every person that’s ever come to us with a true story. But it’s not….”

He drags a hand down his face, grimacing. His expression is a mix of embarrassment and disgust. 

“It’s not bad,” he says, his voice quiet. “It’s what I  _ am,  _ Martin, you have to understand. I feel it on, on multiple levels. There’s the actual, uh, the base part of it, that’s just basically experiencing what happened as the speaker experienced it; that part, it’s suffering, usually. That’s the whole nature of it. But, how to put this— it’s-  _ I’m  _ not the same as a person. There’s another level, a level where those feelings translate into  _ me  _ the same way, uh, the same way sucrose and protein translate into you, I guess. The fear should be bad. But it’s… not.”

He sips his tea. He’s not meeting Martin’s eyes anymore, instead staring at the wall vaguely. “That’s why I worry about taking a statement from you. The negative effects most of my live interviewees get wouldn’t apply to you, because you’re affiliated with the Institute and thus the Eye, but the thought of… feeding on you, of, um, of  _ enjoying  _ your trauma the way a person would enjoy a, a steak or something—I don’t want to do that. Or, I  _ do, _ but it’s like how if you were peckish and it was offered you would think about eating some hideously unethically produced meat dish, like a, an ortolan bunting or something, and then decide that you don’t want to eat it  _ that  _ badly even if it’s right there and probably tastes good?”

“I—maybe?” Martin says, puzzling that one over in his head. “But what if I let you? You’re hardly force-feeding me grain here. I mean, it doesn’t, it’s not like it hurts, right?”

Jon purses his lips, his eyes narrowing as he stares at Martin. It’s like he’s trying to read a sign from far away, like he’s almost figured out what it says. “...No, I don’t believe it does. Not physically, anyway; I’ve been told it does drag out emotions as though you’re reliving the experience, if you do it out loud to me, and I don’t want to put you through that for a second time.”

Martin shrugs. It’s probably just his general lack of a self-preservation instinct, but he doesn’t really see anything that is pushing him too far away from it. “But like. If I did give you my statement, would you not have to… feed… for a while? Like, would it protect someone else from the, uh, ‘exacerbated trauma’ you mentioned yesterday?”

A pause; Jon seems to be struggling with something in his head, and then he sighs heavily. “Yes, I suppose it would. Technically I can survive off of only the written statements anyway, although the last time I did that exclusively for longer than a few months I became, er, essentially nightmare monster narcoleptic? It’s not a great idea, is what I mean. But, Martin, I really-- the idea of harming you, even incidentally, is not a pleasant one to me. This is—“

Martin smiles and reaches over to the cluttered table next to Jon, picking up the tape recorder that sits there. “Jon. I’m  _ offering.  _ It’s okay.”

Jon makes a remarkably varied series of faces in a very short time, going from tired to strained to amused to several Martin couldn’t hope to name, and then it settles on a kind of exhausted acceptance. 

“Alright, fine,” he says, voice dry. The tape recorder in Martin’s hand flicks on without being touched, and in the time between Martin looking at him and it and back again Jon’s eyes go sharp and hungry, his voice steady and rich.

“Statement of Martin Blackwood, archival assistant at the Magnus Institute, regarding a series of encounters with the corrupted hive-mind formerly known as Jane Prentiss,” he says, and the words are heavy as stone. “Recorded direct from subject by the Archivist, second of January 2016. Statement begins.”

Martin takes a deep breath, and on the exhale he speaks in a voice that’s still his own, even though it’s not quite himself that feels like he’s speaking. He describes his friday evening visit to the basement beneath Carlos Vittery’s old flat, details the way even when she was standing still every part of Jane Prentiss  _ moved,  _ twitched and writhed and sang to him in tones discordant and cruel; the details of the three awful nights he spent with towels jammed under his door and his hands over his ears spill out of him with more ease and painful,  _ awful  _ grace than any story he’s ever told. 

Jon was right, it drags him back there, pulling his head beneath the surface of his memories until he’s drowning with it, leaving him feeling shaky and anxious and ill. 

He ends with, “—and that’s when you arrived, and you were there for the rest. She left, and we got a, a ride? Back to the institute from your, uh, your friend.”

“Statement ends,” Jon says, nodding. His eyes are bright,  _ so  _ bright, a warm and satiated kind of calm having settled over him as he listened. “Thank you, Martin. We should keep feelers out for signs of her in the coming days, since I think attacking you like this was a signal that she’s getting bold.”

He clicks the recorder off with a long finger and takes a deep breath. “Was that okay? Are  _ you  _ okay?”

Martin nods slowly, shakily, and smiles at him as much as he can. “Y-yeah. Yeah, I think it was, actually. Kind of cathartic, if I’m honest. How are  _ you _ doing, Jon?”

Jon laughs, a sharp, brittle snap of sound that’s rich with self-loathing and satisfaction in equal parts. “Oh, I’m doing quite well. Your weekend of appalling worm trauma made a  _ wonderful  _ meal for me. Again, I’m sorry.”

For a moment he looks so absolutely pitiful that Martin can’t help laughing. “Jon, it’s  _ okay,”  _ he says, reaching over to pat him on the arm. “I  _ offered!  _ And sure, it wasn’t, like, comfortable, but it’s fine! I’m fine. It honestly makes it better knowing that this awful thing that happened can go to some use feeding someone I care about, you know?”

Jon stares at him for a long moment, too many wide eyes fixed on his face, and then he smiles, soft and small and grateful. It’s a gentle, wavering thing, a face Martin would tell  _ any  _ story to. 

“Thank you, Martin,” he says, quiet. “I mean it. Now, shall we get ready? The actual work day starts in a few minutes, and I have some filing to finish up before Sasha and Tim get here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we love martin “i’m a luxury smorgasbord” blackwood in this house


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im realizing this is the slowest burn ive ever written. they WILL kiss eventually im just uploading shit in real short chapters

It’s a few hours later, perhaps midafternoon, when he hears the creak of the door into the archives. 

The woman who comes down the steps is small. Not physically, necessarily, she’s more or less average in height and build, but her _presence_ is small and faded, like someone turned down the contrast on her entire body. She’s hunched and nervous-looking, clutching at her own arm as if for warmth, even though the temperature in the Archives is quite pleasant. In one hand, held in a white-knuckled grip, is a fragment of something stony and grey. 

“Oh, um, hello there,” Martin says, standing up hurriedly. There’s some part of him that wants to get to her as fast as possible because she looks almost off-balance, like if she’s hit with a light breeze she’ll collapse to the ground. As he gets nearer he can see the bags under her eyes, the redness and streaks on her face making it clear that she’s spent a great deal of time crying lately. For a moment, she stares right through him. 

“Ma’am…? Uh, do you have an appointment? The public’s not really supposed to-”

Her eyes drift to him and blink slowly, then she shakes her head like she’s trying to clear it. Her eyes sharpen and she pushes her hair behind her ear. It goes a long way towards making her look like she’s not having the worst time of her life. “No, yes, um, sorry,” she says, “I’m—Naomi Herne? The lady at the front desk said she’d call down here. I’m to make a _statement,_ I guess.”

“Oh,” Martin says. She doesn’t quite _look_ like Jon’s usual fare of awful people, but… “Um, our Archivist usually comes out by now when statement-givers arrive? Hang on, I’ll go check on him.”

When he pokes his head into Jon’s office he’s greeted by his boss’s back. Jon is rummaging through some of his files, standing on his toes to reach a box on a high shelf. “I see her, thank you, Martin,” Jon says distractedly. “I’m just trying to find some phone numbers, she can come in. Actually, if you could make her some tea once she’s in here—uh, earl grey, two sugars, I think—I imagine it would help steady her.”

“Sure, I can do that,” Martin says, wondering why a dark god of fear and awful knowledge tells Jon other people’s tea preferences when he doesn’t even know his own. “You good?”

Jon hums. It’s a noncommittal, vague sound, like he’s not sure how to answer. “I am never thrilled when decent people are sent here on the whims of other Powers, especially the one she’s… encountered,” he murmurs; it’s soft enough Martin’s sure he’s keeping quiet so Naomi can’t hear. “I’m hoping to give her some trauma resources and pertinent information and send her on her way before she can accidentally give me a full statement, but we can—we can talk about that later.”

Martin nods at the back of Jon’s head and turns around, heading back to the bottom of the stairs. 

“He says to head on into his office—apparently he’s finding some phone numbers for you?”

“Oh. Okay,” Naomi says, fiddling with her hands. There’s an air to her like she thinks there should be something there that isn’t; a ring, maybe. Martin gives her the gentlest smile he can. 

“I’ll bring you two some tea while you talk, and, er-“ he pauses, then says, spurned on by some manic instinct he can’t name, “—don’t, don’t be too spooked by him, hey? Jon can be a little… _intense,_ but I promise he’s gonna try and help.”

She blinks at him, then shrugs and nods. “Okay. Thanks, I guess?”

He smiles at her again, then turns toward their little kitchenette to fix tea. The creak of Jon’s door and the murmur of voices tells him that she’s gone on to her interview. 

He slips into the office as quietly as he can a few minutes later and has to truly steel himself not to spin around and leave again immediately, because that _sure is a stranger crying_ and Martin is extremely not capable of dealing with that right now. She and Jon both look up when he comes in, Jon giving him a look that’s essentially sheer panic and Naomi just a hollow-eyed kind of misery. 

He sets the tea down. 

“Uh, sorry, I, um. Sorry,” he says, raising his hands in supplication. “I, er. Tea. Yeah.”

“Thank you, Martin,” Jon says, sounding vaguely exhausted. He drags one bony hand through his hair and offers him a gentle smile, which makes Martin’s chest do something alarming; Naomi just nods and cradles the mug in her hands. 

Martin flees. Objectively he is probably better at comforting people than Jon is, but this is _not his problem today._ His problem today is helping Sasha beat her head against google in an effort to find out what happened to some poor idiot that got on the wrong side of the Lightless Flame cult. He’s allowed to be an asocial coward today; he can apologize to Jon later. 

As the door swings shut behind him, he can just make out the gentle sound of Jon, quietly murmuring something about _finding people to rely on._

Naomi re-emerges after twenty or so quiet, tense minutes. She still looks somewhat shaken, but there’s a presence to her that wasn’t there before; an awareness of her surroundings, almost, a physicality. She even gives Martin and Sasha a wan smile as she leaves, pushing the heavy door at the top of the stairs open with hands that are only barely shaking. 

Jon comes out a moment later with an empty mug in each hand, looking truly wiped. He drops into Sasha’s chair with a groan —Sasha having stood up to look over Martin’s shoulder at an abandoned facebook page— and drops his head onto his desk with a dull _thunk._

“How’d it go, boss?” Sasha asks, and Jon just makes another incoherent sound into the desk’s surface. Sasha laughs. 

“She seemed okay,” Martin points out. “So that’s a good sign. What happened to _you?”_

Jon lifts his head slowly and shrugs. “I don’t—I don’t _think_ she gave me a full statement? I certainly didn’t compel or record her, but. Ugh, I don’t know, it’s possible I’ll show up in her nightmares anyway. It can be difficult to tell when I don’t actively ask people to tell me their story, and I did _mostly_ just try to help her.”

He starts to idly braid his hair, his fingers deft and quick. “She had a pretty severe run-in with a powerful family that serves one of the Dread Powers,” he explains; “—the Forsaken, also known as the One Alone,They-Will-Forget-You, the _Lonely—_ that sort of thing. Isolation. One of the Institute’s main sources of funding is the Lukas family, which is a ludicrously wealthy family cult dedicated to not caring about other people. I gave her some crisis numbers and tried to get her to understand that she has to call her friends, but I don’t know if it’ll do much.”

“There’s a whole evil god dedicated to being alone?” Martin asks. He hopes his voice doesn’t betray too much of the bone-deep chill that sank into his bones when Jon said its names. Jon’s eyes flick up to his and hold, the endless deep of them both unsettling and profoundly comforting. 

“Yes,” he says, “and its servants are, at least among the Lukases, real jerks. I prefer not to help them get what they want.”

“Huh,” Sasha says. She leans on Martin’s shoulder personably and looks at Jon. “You never did give us a list. Be kind of helpful to have one, if you’ve got one?”

“Oh, of course,” Jon says. “It’s, er, it’s rather more complicated than just a list of names? They tend to intermingle and warp and there’s a great deal of overlap and collaboration between them. The categorization is really more of a, a filing system that Robert Smirke and Jonah Magnus came up with to better comprehend the reports they read than it is, you know, a collection of individual thinking beings—well, nevermind. It works well enough for _my_ filing, so I may as well share it with you in that form first.”

“Isn't Robert Smirke that architect Tim’s got a thing for?” Sasha asks, tilting her head. “He knew old Jimmy Magnet?” 

“Ji—no, nevermind, you can have that,” Jon says, shaking his head fondly. “And yes, I believe I have talked to Tim about Smirke’s work before. I suppose we should wait for him to get back before I fill you in anyway, and I imagine he’ll be thrilled to know we have some of Smirke’s actual writing in storage here, now that I think about it.”

“Where is he, anyway?” Martin asks. Sasha shrugs. 

“Flirting information out of a nursing student, I think?” She says, taking a sip of her tea. “For that, uh, that weird case where a guy thought he was growing extra bones. Not the guy with the book that _takes_ bones, the one with the, uhh—“

She snaps her fingers vaguely, trying to remember, and Jon nods. “Yeah, the one convinced he was getting extra finger bones. That was an intriguing one.

“Oh, speaking of extra finger bones,” he says mildly, as though that is a thing that people say, “I feel like I should introduce you three to Michael more properly before he decides it was rude of me not to.”

“That tall guy with the doors and the, the _hands?”_ Martin asks, grimacing. Jon hums in apparent agreement. 

“Yes. He’s… he’s a lot, but he’s a friend,” he says. “And he’s dangerous, so it’s probably good for you all to be able to recognize him.”

“What’s his _deal,_ anyway?” Sasha asks. “Tim and I only got a glance at him, but he looked like a car dealership air dancer with giant knife hands. Truly wild.”

Jon snorts. “I don’t know, that’s a pretty good summation, honestly. Uh, in truth, though, he is a monster; a fragment of the entity referred to as the _spiral,_ specifically called the Distortion when it’s not going by Michael. He’s, uh, kind of a manifestation of madness and lies, I suppose. Trickery, mazes, fractals, that sort of thing.”

“Wait, why are you friends? Aren’t you some kind of anti-lie?” Sasha asks. Jon sighs. 

“Yes and no,” he says. “It’s true our ..aspects.. are rather opposed, as these things go, but Michael tends to _distort_ the truth, twist it, rather than outright lie. It’s pretty impressive sometimes, actually. We’re friends because…”

He trails off with a sigh. “We go back a ways,” he says after a moment. “Michael.. Michael is a complicated being, and I don’t want to abuse the knowledge of his past I have without his consent; suffice it to say he has had a complicated and unfortunate life, and I’ve _tried_ to be a relatively positive part of it. He and I share certain similarities despite our polarized natures, and I admit I have a fondness for the guy, if for no other reason than being a fear monster can get pretty lonely and boring, and he is anything but _boring.”_

“Huh,” says Martin, drumming his fingers on the desk. “So is there, I don’t know, some kind of eldritch horror message board you guys use to talk? Evil Reddit?”

“Evil Reddit is just 4Chan, and no,” Jon says, amused. “A lot of us are old and don’t know how to use computers. I can figure them out because i am nearly omniscient, but most of them…”

He laughs, finger-combing his hair idly. “I’m trying to imagine Simon Fairchild using a tablet and all that’s coming up in my head is everybody’s tech-incompetent grandpa taking a closeup of his ear, honestly. Although, knowing him, he’s probably figured out how to be at least a _bit_ rude online.”

Sasha hums. “Simon Fairchild… that’s the one that throws people out of planes, right?”

“Yes,” Jon says. “He’s… oh, four hundred and some years old, I’d say, and an absolute weirdo. Nice enough, as the evil old men I know go. Still _very_ evil, mind. But entertaining.”

“Who’s evil and entertaining?” Tim’s voice rings down the stairs as he sweeps through the door. He’s got a manila folder in his hand and is looking very pleased with himself.

“What, other than you?”

“ _Sasha,”_ he says, all completely fake offense. “I’m not evil, I’m just cool and sexy. Everything else is projection. Anyway, what was Jon talking about, and is it more or less important than me getting extremely illegal copies of some fucked up X-rays?”

“Oh, give them here,” Sasha says, moving around to Tim’s desk and making grabby hands at him. “And, uhh. More? Probably? Since this case is pretty dead anyway and we were talking about Jon’s, uh, evil old man book club?”

“It’s not _my_ evil old man book club,” Jon says, indignant. “Honestly, there really aren’t that many books involved. Leitner wasn’t ever invited to the meetings _Elias_ attends, and _I_ only ever go when he tells me to, because dealing with more than one of the old bastards at once is a headache. Anyway, I could explain all this much more clearly if we circled back to the part where you asked me about the categorizations of the Entities themselves; shall we do dinner again?”

“Oh, absolutely, if I’m gonna have my worldview rocked by knowledge of the great and terrible I am _going_ to do it with curry,” Sasha says. “Let me get my bag."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please don't worry abt the timeline, things got sped up on the prentiss front because jon doesnt take a week per statement!! anyway comments are always cherished and treasured i hope you enjoyed it


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A dramatis personae, of sorts, and a quiet moment.

“So, okay, you said there were fourteen,” Sasha says between bites of curry. Jon, who is sitting primly with a glass of water and nothing else in front of him, nods. 

“Correct. I am of course happy to go through them one by one or just give you a list and let you ask questions,” he says, “the good news is that unlike most people being exposed to this world for the first time, the three of you do essentially have free access to eldritch Wikipedia. The bad news is I’m not great at figuring out how much information is  _ too  _ much, so I ask you all to please tell me if I start waxing lyrical about something grotesque.”

Tim shoves his hair out of his face with a laugh. “What, do you just get so caught up in the poetry of it all that you forget you’re talking about, you know, writhing nightmare flesh or whatever?”

“Unfortunately,” Jon says, a sardonic smile on his face, “yes. I’m about as desensitized to this stuff as it’s possible to be; by my nature I simply find it fascinating. I am… passable, at faking decorum, but I know I can go off on unpleasant tangents.”

Martin is quiet. Sasha and Tim had  _ conspired  _ to have him sitting next to Jon, and he’s at once terribly distracted and focusing as much as he can; when Tim raises an eyebrow at him he just makes a face. 

“Okay, so just run us down the line like it’s an unpleasant get to know you exercise and you’re everyone,” Sasha says. “Name, job, one fun fact, that sort of thing.”

Jon snorts. “Yes, alright, that’s doable. I suppose I should start with the one you work for, the Beholding; the Eye is the fear of being watched, being known, your darkest secrets being seen by something other and malevolent. It’s also the fear of learning what you shouldn’t, of forbidden knowledge and awful truths. That’s the part I’m a fragment of, although technically I guess I am sort of the receptacle for all those dark secrets?

“Next, I guess I’ll go with the Lonely; it’s pretty simple, and tends to be loosely allied with the eye. Its purview is isolation, emptiness, looking out into the world and realizing that no one is looking back. As far as the entities go, it’s one of the most insidious. Not  _ the  _ most, but up there.”

Jon’s eyes flick to Martin for a fraction of a second and then he feels Jon’s knee bump his under the table, a tiny sort of  _ I’m here _ gesture. 

“Another one we’ve encountered is the Corruption; represents filth, rot, bugs and decay and illness. Within the Corruption are different, uh, different kinds of Avatars—Jane Prentiss, for instance, is a part of the Hive, which is a kind of love, in its own deeply upsetting way, whereas John Amherst—oh, I don’t think you three have been exposed to his work yet. Well. He’s more on the  _ disease  _ side. Infection rather than infestation.

“An important distinction, here, between most insect statements and arachnid statements; the  _ Web  _ is an entity of its own, and is. Well, it’s definitely the most insidious; the Web, or the Spider, or the Mother of Puppets, it has a lot of names, is both the fear specifically of spiders — I’m not saying it’s fair, Martin, but it is what it is — and the fear of being controlled, manipulated, woven into a plan you cannot see nor change. The Web and I have issues.”

“I’m sorry,  _ issues? _ Are you saying you’ve got, what,  _ beef  _ with the dread god of spider hell?” Tim asks, raising an eyebrow. 

“No, beef would be the Flesh. Genuinely, I don’t know how aware the entity itself is of me, but certainly I’m not on great terms with any of its servants,” Jon says, shrugging. “Actual, natural spiders are generally fine, although I prefer to keep them out of the archive since I’m never sure which ones my… acquaintance… Annabelle can see through. But there’s, um, there’s unpleasant history there, yes.”

“Incredible.”

“Seems kind of dumb that spiders would get an entire fear entity,” Martin mutters. Beside him, Jon laughs. 

“Yeah, it’s a little arbitrary, unfortunately. I’ve always found it strange  _ snakes _ aren’t more heavily featured, given their prevalence in folklore and religion? But I suppose webs have a more striking symbolic use. 

“Anyway. There’s also the Spiral, which we’ve talked about before; Michael is a part of it. It’s the fear of lies, of madness, of  _ unreality, _ of being unable to trust your own mind or surroundings. Fractals, also, are a part of it, branching paths and impossibilities and such. It’s a very, er, colorful one. Difficult to categorize, sometimes.”

Sasha raises a hand to cut him off before he can go to the next one. “I have a question about Michael, actually. You said he was your friend, but also that he’s dangerous; what should we do if we wind up talking to him without you around?”

“Ah,” Jon says, pulling a face. “Well. I don’t…  _ think…  _ he’d eat you-“

“ _ Eat  _ us?!”

“Er, yes. Like I said, I don’t think he would, but it’s probably best not to go through any of his doors unless you absolutely have to? At least not without me. The Distortion’s corridors are confusing on the best of days.”

“What  _ is  _ he?” Tim asks, frowning. Jon hums. 

“He’s… a monster. Technically. And he’s also a warped alternate dimension made of infinite hallways. And he’s also a man named Michael,  _ sort  _ of. It’s a difficult thing to define, since by his nature he is undefinable.”

“But, okay, wait, is he a person or not?” 

“Hm. Unfortunately, Tim, there’s really no good answer to that question; any answer I give you would be some kind of lie, which I prefer to avoid. Suffice it to say he is my friend, and I am  _ pretty  _ sure he won’t kill or maim any of you.”

“That’s extremely comforting, thank you, boss,” Tim says, groaning and scrubbing at his face with one hand. “He’s a monster that’s also a hallway that’s also a person but isn’t a person and he  _ probably  _ won’t kill and eat us. Fantastic.”

“Technically—nevermind,” Jon says, shaking his head with a wry smile. “Nevermind, that doesn’t matter and only makes it more confusing.

“Anyway, Dread Powers. Next, I guess, is the Vast? Vast is pretty self-explanatory; heights, depths, wide open spaces, an empty sky. Something so huge that to it we are less than nothing. The Fairchild…. family? Cult? Loosely-connected polycule? Anyway, the Fairchilds are another source of funding for the institute, so we have to play nice with them.

“On the other side of the same coin is the  _ Buried;  _ crushing, dirt, digging deeper and deeper in search of a place that’s finally secure; choking and claustrophobia and suffocation, that kind of thing. They like to act like they’re the opposite of the Vast, but they actually have a lot in common.”

Martin laughs softly and says, “are they also in love? You’re making it sound very Romeo and Juliet.”

That gets a laugh and a warm grin out of Jon, which means it’s a  _ complete  _ success. “I don’t know if they’re capable of love, but it’s a compelling image for sure.”

“Star-crossed lovers! I mean, the sky and the earth? Absolute classic, you can’t tell me otherwise,” he laughs. Jon bumps his knee again companionably. 

“Incredible. Okay, next, there’s the dark, which I’m sure you can extrapolate the nature of. The Dark’s and the Eye’s servants  _ loathe  _ each other, since obviously we’re all about knowing and seeing and the Dark is… not that. The dark is probably one of the most primal of the fears; it’s many people’s first fear, certainly, and one that lingers. 

“Another primal one is the  _ Hunt;  _ proof positive that the fears do not only reflect humans. It is, quite simply, the fear of being prey. Teeth and claws and blood, running desperate through brush and forest… Its avatars tend to be… quite vicious. 

“Around the same time as Smirke was working out the main fourteen was when the Flesh became one, separate from the Hunt—the flesh is most of the, erm, the body horror stuff we see; it’s bones and flesh and sickening  _ meat,  _ the fears brought about by a world transitioning to an industrialized livestock system. It’s a fairly gross domain.”

“So- so is that, uh,  _ Boneturner  _ guy flesh?” Sasha looks at her curry and takes a bite of vegetables, avoiding the meat. 

“Yeah,” Jon says, then he laughs softly and shakes his head. “Although he is unique in that he  _ truly  _ does not care about bringing the world to its knees in his patron’s image. The guy just wants to bend bones, apparently.”

“Sorry, bringing the what to what,” Tim asks. Jon sighs. 

“I’m getting there. There’s also the Slaughter, which is the rhythmic, cold violence often found in war, and the Desolation—also known as the Lightless Flame— which is burning, mindless destruction, all the heat and devastation of fire with none of the light or life. I mean, okay, the fire does often still burn, but  _ symbolically,  _ they have a whole thing happening. 

“Tim, you and I talked last night about the Stranger; the Stranger is  _ also  _ not fond of the Eye, because the Eye is It-Knows-You and the Stranger is I-Do- _ Not- _ Know-You. The stranger is someone you do not know but that means you harm, it’s the uncanny valley, a person that is just  _ slightly  _ wrong. It also deals in. Well. In skin. Faces, flaying, stolen identities, that kind of thing.”

“Clowns and circuses,” Tim mumbles, and Jon nods. 

“Yes. Given traveling circuses are very much paint-faced strangers appearing and vanishing again, they make an excellent vessel for the Stranger’s happenings. The specific Circus of the Other that you encountered is a bit over a hundred years old and, er, it’s a lot. I will mention that, much like spiders,  _ most  _ circuses have no plans to skin anyone or end the world. Just to be clear.”

“Noted and ignored,” Tim says, and Jon laughs. 

“Finally, of course, is the End. Inevitability. Death. Pretty simple, but it was the first and it will be the last. All things must end and what goes up must come down and no matter what you do, no matter who you hurt, there is nothing that can stop it forever. Something many avatars try to forget.”

His eyes are faraway, his voice distant; this is something he thinks about often, and something that doesn’t actually seem to scare  _ him.  _ After a second he shakes it off and smiles. “—But the heat-death of the universe won’t be for a while. Inertia will catch up eventually, but like Simon is so fond of telling me, we might as well have a good time while we’re here.”

That evening, while Martin is getting ready to sleep, Jon slips quietly into the old document room where the folding bed is. 

“Martin,” he says, his voice soft. Martin stops fruitlessly fluffing his pillow to look at him. 

“Yeah?”

“I, um. I just wanted to thank you,” he says. He tugs at his hair absently, not meeting Martin’s gaze. 

“Oh, that’s— what for?” Martin asks, blinking. Jon smiles, tiny and fragile. 

“This morning, when you gave me your statement— ah. That you did that, it probably saved Miss Herne from an even worse fate than the one the Lukases have already forced on her. I… I really do appreciate it. So. Thank you.”

Martin stares at Jon, speechless for a moment, then he nods, smiling back at him. “I mean— yeah, of course, Jon. I told you earlier, I’m glad I could. And, um, I’m also glad you didn’t take her statement anyway, I guess? I assume you could have.”

“Yes,” Jon murmurs. “It would have been easier than what I did. But avoiding hurting her, it’s something I wouldn’t have been able to do without you —a-and I’m not saying we should make a habit of you getting worm haunted or anything!— I just. You’ve been a wonderful help, Martin, in general as well as in this specific circumstance. I wanted to make sure you knew that.”

There is absolutely no response to that prepared in Martin’s internal catalogue of things Martin Blackwood ever has a reason to say, so he fumbles, laughing nervously and stumbling over a few false starts before finally arriving on a simple, “I’m glad. I— It’s good. To help. And, I’m… I know it’s wild, because I’m trapped here or whatever, but I’m really glad we met, Jon.”

The smile he gets from Jon in response is bright and open, the eyes beneath his normal ones crinkling in a way that’s as hopelessly endearing as it is strange. He tucks his hair absently behind his ear, then shifts minutely forward so he can place a warm hand on Martin’s shoulder and squeeze, a fond gesture made quietly intimate by the quiet dark of the Archives at night. 

“Rest well, Martin,” he says. His hand lingers for a long, quiet moment before he finishes, “... I’m glad, too.”

And then he’s gone, the door to old doc storage swinging shut with a gentle  _ click.  _ As he goes, the watched feeling of the Archive starts to fade, for once, leaving Martin alone in the dark with the heat of a thin hand weighing ghostly and strange on his shoulder, the brand-like sense of it through his thin pajama shirt lingering there long after he should be asleep. 

_ Fuck.  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i guess i’m cursed to have 2k chapters ONLY for this fic. whatever i guess!!!!!!! anyway please comment and hit me up on twitter

**Author's Note:**

> comments and reactions are always appreciated, as is hitting me up on twitter (@honeycorvid)! probably this fic will have multiple "parts," since a lot of what I have written doesn't really fit neatly into one narrative; but this will be the main one. anyway it's fun to try and make a jon that's like season one in personality but with all the knowledge of season five
> 
> title from metaphor by the crane wives! an excellent song that does not one hundred percent fit this fic but that i love desperately anyhow and it's MY FIC and EYE get to pick the vaguely irrelevant trauma song by an anticapitalist country band. the title of the collection is also from a crane wives song, specifically strangler fig, and if you read into it enough you can fig-ure out jons true vibes


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